Anti-theistic Theories: Being the Baird Lecture for 1877

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Page 43 The ruder tribes of men seem unable to conceive either of mere matter or mere
spirit ; they spiritualise matter and materialise spirit ; souls and gods are
supposed by them to be material beings , and material things to have souls and
divine ...

Page 50 The views of moral life which he inculcated are the very best that one can conceive associated with materialistic and atheistic principles . He held that the
sovereign good of man was not to be found in the pleasures of sense , in wealth ,
in ...

Page 70 ... and the earth with the same vehemence and narrowness which have become
so familiar to us of late . And yet they were not unwilling to admit the existence of
the gods worshipped by the people , if conceived of as only a sort of etherealised
...

Page 71 ... and dependence on others . ” The Epicureans , in fact , conceived of the gods
as ideal Epicureans — as beings serenely happy , without care , occupation , or
sorrow . To belief in the immortality of the soul they offered strenuous opposition .

Page 94 ... its minutest changes might be traced by an eye of sufficient strength , or by an
ordinary eye assisted by a sufficiently powerful microscope ; but a thought , a
feeling , a volition cannot even be conceived as perceived by the sight or any
sense .

Popular passages

Page 160 - That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to. another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has iu philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.

Page 172 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process...

Page 76 - It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For, while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further, but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.